There are many other GOTV efforts underway for Senate races, Congressional races and ballot initiatives that could use your mojo as well. Odds are good that you live in a state with at least one of these races. Control of the Senate is on the line and here is a list of the House races Democrats could win if we can GOTV.

Early voting began in Maryland today. I plan to vote Sunday (one step ahead of Sandy) and first thing Friday morning I’m off to Ohio.

We can’t leave anything on the table. We only have ten days.

The fact that Romney even has a 26% chance of victory should motivate you into action. Now is the time to act.

What are your GOTV plans?

Cheers

________

ps: John was spot on about Stoller. We are plagued with self-important white males pretending to speak for progressives even as they work overtime to block and damage any liberal progress. It is hard for me to read Stoller and not wonder if his real problem with Barack Obama is this and not any policy. Assholes like him make the GOTV effort even more important.

We are plagued with sell-important white males pretending to speak for progressives even as they work overtime to block and damage any liberal progress.

I have a friend who I love dearly, but dude cannot get over voting for the Green Party, and constantly insisting that Obama is the same as whatever generic Republican is out. If only we would vote for NaderMckinney Stein, the world would be perfect.

Like I said, I did a rotisserie chicken today, complete with roasted potatoes in the drip tray beneath the chicken and steamed cabbage and green beans in the top. A whole meal with one counter top appliance. How cool is that?

ETA sorry I linked to thumbnails, if you need bigger shots then please let me know.

@Litlebritdifrnt: Hey, that’s nifty!! I have just about the same model (or so it appears), sans rotisserie skewer, though it has the functionality built in. I also got mine from a thrift store about a decade ago ($18), and it’s mostly still growing strong. I’ve always regretted not being able to cook a chicken on a spit, but the convection part of my Hamilton Beach pretty much rocks. Good find!

As far as GOTV, I tried in 2008 and realized I’m pretty bad at it. I’m doing what I can, but I don’t think me on the other end of the phone or door with strangers is good for any candidate. I don’t exactly exude confidence. I’m in awe of those who can do it well. I applaud you.

So it’s money, bumper stickers and yard signs and facebook links.

I did help several people make sure they were registered to vote and sign up for mail ballots. I’m better at that end.

“Early voting lines were long Saturday across metro Atlanta as thousands took advantage of the weather and opportunity to cast ballots ahead of the Nov. 6 presidential election.

From voter registration offices in Rockdale County and south Fulton County to offices in north Fulton, Cobb and Gwinnett, lines often wrapped around buildings and extended along sidewalks, observers and postings on Twitter said.”

@Dennis G.: It was made through the 60’s because I wasn’t born until ’57, and I remember all those icons… They added Hawaii and Alaska, of course, but it was a long time ago –Alaska without an icon for oil, and Hawaii without one for birth certificates.

It is hard for me to read Stoller and not wonder if his real problem with Barack Obama is this and not any policy.

You really ought to be ashamed of yourself, douche.

Unfortunately, folks like you who use RAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCCCISSSSSSSSSSTTTTT as a catch-all, fall back, all purpose accusation, are taking the punch out of the accusation when it actually fits the circumstances.

…because there are so many people like Hal’s friend, who are just so stubbornly, willfully ignorant of the harm they’re doing.

These people are the mirror image of the austerians. They want everyone to feel the pain, too, but for different reasons. Fucking pathetic assholes, all of them.

I have two little kids to care for, and not much free time to do GOTV (I’d have to spend hours in the car go up to WI to have an impact, living where I do). But dammit I am giving all the dough I can afford this time.

You folks have persuaded me that Obama is the lesser evil, on the merits of the Obamacare issue and the stories thereof that very sick people have told here. Your Internets are in the mail, one for each of you.

@Donut: Yeah, I don’t think it’s race in Stoller’s case. We went through this in 2000, 2004, we’ll go through it again in 2016. I think Stoller is one of those willfully infantile fantasists who choose to think that if people only knew about Dennis!, he’d win 48 states!

I think Stoller’s main problem with Obama is residual bitterness from the 2008 primary. That’s more or less when he abandoned sanity and went around the bend. I don’t think race really has much if anything to do with it.

It easily cooked a 7.5lb chicken this evening which turned out to be super moist and delicious, I discovered that it has an automatic “rest” feature where it stops the cooking five minutes before the timer goes off to let the meat rest, and the top cooking part of it easily steamed half a head of cabbage and a bunch of green beans without using any additional power. Using traditional methods I would have had to heat up the entire kitchen with the full size oven for the chicken and the roasted potatoes and then had to use the burners for the cabbage and the green beans.

@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not so sure about that. The only dealings I’ve ever had with Matt Stoller were on DKos in 2008 where he accused me of being sexist because I supported Obama over Hillary (I am a woman mind you). He said I had no idea of the struggles upper middle class white women like his mother had to endure and that all else paled in comparison.

He was right. Upper middle class status is something I will only attain in my wildest dreams so the struggles of upper class white women are really beyond my understanding.

By the way, people should read Nate Silver’s latest. He looked at the accuracy of 10-day-prior polls compared to the actual result. Short version: With one exception (Texas in 1992), every well-polled (3 or more different polling firms) state with a lead of 2 points or more at 10 days out, the polls accurately reflected the winner.

That’s Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin for Obama, and North Carolina for Romney, with the rest being toss-up. Those are good odds.

Try uploading the photo to google image – it worked really well for my drawings.

Made calls over to Wisconsin last night & am going to get some more numbers for next week. My responses have been mostly very positive & none have been pro-Rmoney. A couple people got miffed about being called but you have to expect that.

@beltane: A PUMA turned Naderite? Why not? I didn’t read Stoller’s snivel, but the post at LGM does say he goes to the old Eschatron trope of Obama being secretly anti-choice (Sotomayor and Kagan, too, of course)

“how awesome it would have been to have been assraped by Sandusky” Eh, I’m guessing every red blooded ‘murkin conservative secretly wants to be pounded by a football coach. It directly addresses their authoritarian daddy issues.

They will never, ever give up on the dream of a moderate Republican. Never. We are going to be hearing about Eisenhower Republicans until we die. They did the same thing with Bush in 2000. He was the MBA President, the Reformer Who Gets Results. They will never learn.

@Spatula: “raaaaaaaaaaaacccccccccciiiisssssttttt” ya know, Spackle, the only people; and I mean The Only people I ever see use that construction is conservative assholes like Michelle Malkin and other racists. You’re a gay progressive like I’m an antedeluvian fish.

@lamh35: I’ve spent a lot of time in Des Moines. I think this choice was made because the Publisher was getting pressure at Wakanda Country Club. The 1% of Des Moines is like the 1% elsewhere.

What was amazing about the endorsement was how poorly thought out it was. They offered zero details to support their case. It was a word salad and an embarrassment. The DMR, like many other newspapers, is just a shadow of the paper it used to be. It only exists to feed off the Primary Caucus revenue. When it goes belly up, few will care. This lazy endorsement of a fantasy Mitt will just speed up the paper’s demise.

@JPL: ahh, I went back and read what I was referencing and what it says is that the paper was bought out by a Repub owner sometime in the past 4 years, so the Mitt endorsement was not surprise to the person I talked to.

They suspect that all the hoopla over the OTR with DMR instigating it, was to create buzz so that when they endorsed Romney it would be bigger news I guess.

Because of Obamacare, I can get health insurance if I lose what I’ve got.

I’m 67, but my wife is only 58. I’m working to 70 to keep her covered on my decent company plan (and also because the SS payout is a good bit more per month.) I didn’t know what we were going to do when I retire and she isn’t yet medicare eligible; she has a bunch of pre-existing conditions. So this is all a tremendous relief.

If the GOBP keeps the House (‘m assuming the Dems keep the Senate) they’ll probably vote another several dozen times (once a week, do you think?) to repeal. Don’t ANY of their goddamned constituents benefit from the law?

New motto. When I think a kitchen utential’s opinion on anything would be interesting, I’ll go to very own junk drawer. Got a nice one there, good quality, mensa level in intelligence (comparatively speaking) and can manage the heat when I’m making sauces.

I likw the state with nothing but the star dropping into the shoe. Doctor who episode, clearly, but is it the Weeping Angels ot the Vasta Nerada or something weirder yet?

Back on topic, I already early votereded here in Nevada (straight Democratic ticket; in non partisan races where I was unfamiliar with the candidates, I chose the name that sounded least like it would belong to a white male). On my day off next week I’ll try to do some GOTVing but single-dad status complicates the logistics.

@kay: Bingo. David Broder saw DDE when he looked in the mirror, and what Broder saw in the mirror is who. he thought should be running the country. Real Eisenhower Repubilcans, including the original I believe, opposed Kennedy’s tax cuts on grounds of fiscal irresponsibility.

ANd that op-ed is pure Broder. grounded in the notion that bipartisanship (Dems rubberstamp REpublican ideas) somehow trumps science, economics, common sense, whatever.

@Dennis G.: The endorsement did mention Mitt’s working across the aisle in MA but failed to say that meant vetoing 800 bills of which 700 were overridden.
That’s not true bi-partisanship. What is a paper if it doesn’t know how to use google.

Which candidate could forge the compromises in Congress to achieve these goals? When the question is framed in those terms, Mitt Romney emerges the stronger candidate.

Will Romney call them “Democrat House” and “Democrat Senate” when he’s compromising with them?

They’re assholes. I think they made a stink out of the whole “off the record” thing so that they can embarrass the president and then cry about transparency. I don’t think they expected the president to make it public.

You have a very odd way of displaying that kitchen tool. All you ever do is bad mouth Dems here on BJ. I’m an actual liberal and I push my party to the left every chance I get and in many different ways.

Am I happy with the party or our President? Not really but I am smart enough to know that at this point in time this is as good as we can get.

You on the other hand whine endlessly in ways that end up supporting the positions of carp like Rmoney. Its douche nozzles like you (are pretending I assume) that told us Gore ws no pure enough so we HAD to vote for Nader. Yean that taught the nation didn’t it?

So, if you really are a liberal and not just a kitchen tool poseur pull your head out of your ass and look at what your kind did to this country. If you actually are just a GOP plant (much more likely) then you just keep fornicating that chicken, its the only thing you are good at as far as you have demonstrated here

I might have agreed with you in prior years…but look what we have been through with this recession/near-depression, and look at the highly competent, long-term beneficial responses Obama has made, and it’s hard not to conclude that if our current president had less melanin in his skin, the race woud not even be close. Romney is an incompetent boob, a horrible liar, and has no natural skills as a politician. He should have been laughed out of the primaries, but made it through on cash and connections. Come on, let’s get real. We should be looking at a race analogous to FDR’s race in ’36, and instead we have the Stollers of the world insisting that pain, pain and more pain for the rubes and the poors is the only prescription for what ails us. It is madness. Seriously, it is true stupid madness, the kind that only a privileged white boy can spew. The people most negatively impacted by what Stoller wants are brown-skinned folks. That is indisputable.

It’s a softer form of racism, I guess…but it’s still fucking racist as fuck, IMO.

Which candidate could forge the compromises in Congress to achieve these goals? When the question is framed in those terms, Mitt Romney emerges the stronger candidate.

In other words, President Obama’s inability to make the Grand Old Party love him and actually want to help America means we should get rid of Obama, not, oh say, the GOP members of the house and senate who would rather vote over and over to veto Obamacare than a jobs bill, or spend all there time trying to force women to have ultrasounds via metal wands.

In what way, shape, or form is Romney willing to compromise? Teabaggers aren’t voting for compromise. Limblow isn’t voting for compromise. No major Republican in Congress is voting for compromise. This is such a complete and total bullshit endorsement.

New motto. When I think a kitchen utential’s opinion on anything would be interesting, I’ll go to very own junk drawer. Got a nice one there, good quality, mensa level in intelligence (comparatively speaking) and can manage the heat when I’m making sauces.

blah blah blah…idiot. I voted for Gore in Broward County Florida, no less, then watched him hand the WH to GWB without a fight to the death. Then I voted for John Kerry and watched him concede the election in a press release while he headed out of the country to vacation with his .1% wife.

Fuck off.

If you’re the type who can get behind those kinds of Democrats then bully for you.

Well, compromise and bipartisanship are defined in their dictionaries as everyone doing what the republicans want, no matter the circumstances, so it’s not like they’re asserting anything more profound than a=a (in wingnuttish logic) with their forging blather.

@Spatula: You have a point. It could just be that Stoller is a complete idiot and he comes to his destructive dribble on the basis of his ego and ignorance alone. I do not deny that possibility.

It was snark to link to the AP poll on the growing racist attitudes of a majority of white Americans. Most of these respondents call themselves Conservatives, but there are some who call themselves progressives. These “progressive” would hide their feelings behind word salads of policy more than the conservatives, but they did exist in in the poll. Is Stoller one of them? I really do not know, but it is pretty clear that he has a visceral hatred of President Obama that would make a Teabagger blush. Perhaps his anger is all based on policy. It is possible, but it is not unreasonable to think that some other factors are also influencing his opinions.

Still, I’ll give you the point and accept that fact that it is possible that Matt Stoller is simply a self-absorbed asshole who is too busy thinking about his own “brilliance” to consider race in his thinking.

@Donut: Come on, let’s get real.
In terms of the electorate as a whole, I absolutely think this election is race-based, I just don’t know about Stoller as an individual.

I was thinking today about the electoral map, how VA is supposed to be a fatal weakness for Obama, when he was the first Dem to win it since IIRC LBJ. I don’t know if WVa or Arkansas would be gimmes for Hillary Clinton or some other pale Democrat, but they’d probably be more in play .

No, Dennis, sorry, I think you should stick to your guns. When a person states preferences for outcomes that will cause disproportionate pain and suffering to black folks and Latinos, I think it’s more than fair to call that person a racist. Again, he may be a softer type of racist, one who is not actively espousing white supremacy as a philosophy, but what he says he wants is gonna be kinda bad for non-whites. That’s kind of not up for debate. Whether he intends to be a racist or not, he wants something that would be racist in outcome.

@Spatula: I agree that Stoller is an asshole and that would apply to any and all who defend his dribble.

It is also a fact that a decent number of white folks who call themselves progressives have racist attitudes. I suggested that that could be an alternative explanation for Stoller’s idiocy. It was snark and troll bait. I do not know the truth of Stoller’s attitudes about race and neither do do you.

OTOH. you seem pretty sensitive to the entire question of race and any conversation of white privileged in America. I Guess you are a white male of a certain age who would find any deep examination of these issues very uncomfortable. And so you react with a bit of rage and defensiveness whenever it is mentioned. So it goes.

Your projection onto me that anybody who does not support the President is an auto-racist is evidence of your queasiness when it comes to confronting questions of race and white male privileged in America. It seems to make you feel better, so I guess you should keep running with that fantasy.

I would apologize for making you so uncomfortable, but I’ve decided I just don’t care what you think about anything.

I live in one of the few (very slightly) undeveloped areas of Southern California. Town politics can be vicious on issues of real estate developers vs. environmentalists (and yes, NIMBYs as well). No one is officially a Democrat or a Republican, but it’s obvious who is who.

One of the best city council members is named Bob Baker. He helped stop the city from selling a huge parcel of land RIGHT ON THE FRIGGIN’ PACIFIC OCEAN for $3 million dollars to build a shopping/restaurant complex. I believe there were also incentives to waive some taxes or fees as well.

So Bob is up for re-election. The instant the filing period started, another “candidate” named Bob Baker came into city hall and filed the appropriate paperwork. No one knows who he was and his address was an attorney’s office. He’s never campaigned or anything. So now we have Bob Baker 0 and Bob Baker 1 on the ballot. They are hoping to confuse people and bleed off enough of his support to get him put out. I hope it doesn’t work. All the real Bob Baker’s signs have “Bob Baker #1 on them.

Howard Fineman ‏@howardfineman
It’s not scientific or quantifiable by Nate Silver but Des Moines Register endorsement of Mitt first time it’s’ clear O may lose the race.
1h Howard Fineman ‏@howardfineman
So DMR endorsed Romney. Obama deserves what he gets in Iowa for this case of Political sloth.
1h Howard Fineman ‏@howardfineman
#Obama admitted in DM register off the record interview that he hadn’t talked to the edit board in 4 years!! Political malpractice.

What the fuck? So suddenly newspaper endorsements count again? More than polling or field organization? The DMR is gonna sway voters in CO, OH, WI, VA and NH? This is just weird.

@kay: They look at him and see their own mortality. Their industry is falling to pieces beneath their feet and people like Nate are forging careers from the ruins. Of course they’re bitchy and vindictive.

What the fucking what? Do you think that Kerry had an option other than taking a short break, as a Senator, after losing the election? Did you really think he was going to go for armed revolution? And if you thought that–why didn’t you? I mean fuck, man, there are plenty of redneck militias out there you could have joined and even a few left wing ones if you cared enough to send the very best.

@kay: They look at him and see their own mortality. Their industry is falling to pieces beneath their feet and people like Nate are forging careers from the ruins. Of course they’re bitchy and vindictive.

@Spatula: ABL, Dennis G, and DougJ would sell their own mothers to join the MSM. Starving, desperate egos in constant need of puffing are not confined to the MSM; some of them are front pagers on blogs.

You really are an idjit. ABL could make huge bank “converting” to conservatism and going on wingnut welfare, maybe a FNC “commenting” gig.

Since she hasn’t done this, I’m going to assume that selling her own mother is emphatically not on the table.

You know, I have to say this. Would you fucking dumb people trust black people for fucking once that someone can be very smart, not a klansman, but has a racist viewpoint? Stoller can be very much a progressive purist, a PUMA, a Naderite, yaddayadda, and still harbor a view that frankly, the black guy is always the greater evil, unless he is his sort of black guy, the one that thinks exactly how Stoller wants him to think. I’ve noticed this about diversity. Some people mean diverse. Some people mean “exactly like me, but with different shadings”. Sucks, but it’s true. I don’t care about Stoller. I don’t care about or for most of the precious pundits of liberal media or blogs. They’ve all been off about something. But an awful lot of them gained an obtuseness during the 07 campaigns that never, ever went away. I know the voices of certain posters will chime in with their derision, because no one truly knows about racism and bigotry like white males, history’s most oppressed people and I promise I will give your reasons the consideration they are due. Just as you’ve give ours.

Oh…By the bye, this white dude, fully aware that he might hold some racist views (hard to deny as a person of white male privilege, and largely sheltered from diversity by location) will be voting a second time for Barak Obama because he’s the BEST FUCKING GUY FOR THE JOB regardless of his skin color.

” I know the voices of certain posters will chime in with their derision, because no one truly knows about racism and bigotry like white males, history’s most oppressed people and I promise I will give your reasons the consideration they are due. Just as you’ve give ours.”

Hey Reumatoid: I grew up a gay white male in southern fucking Kansas. Let’s talk oppression and bigotry and what that does to a person when they face it from a wee age. Let’s talk about the mind fuck of being taught on a daily basis that you are, in your soul, an abomination against god him or herself. Let’s discuss, while we’re at it, living and growing up with the knowledge that your parents, siblings, and everyone who knows you, would hate and reject you if they knew who you really are; and what that does to a psyche over time.

Want to compare victimtude? Want to discuss your never ending implications that all white men are the same, knowing only privilege and glory?

@Lojasmo: Your ETA makes no sense. I actually read the articles and op-eds involved and you clearly have not.
You just want to spew some venom at me.
Fat, dumb and full of hate is no way to go through life son.

Phone banked for Obama today. Called Colorado. 8 out 10 humans either planned to vote for Obama or already had voted for Obama. And I could tell people at other computer stations were having good results, too, because the bells kept ringing (Everytime you get a “yes” you ring a bell) Last week it was Nevada which wasn’t nearly as good. Someone brought in huge cauldrons of homemade chili with cornbread and a delicious pasta salad. That was the best chili I ever tasted.

It is not enough to apologize for the uncalled-for and snarky accusation that Matt Stoller’s reasons for not wanting to vote for Obama must stem from racism – you must remove this portion of your entry entirely before anyone can truly believe you are sincere in your “apology”. There are plenty of people out here who believe that Obama’s actions in eviscerating the Bill of Rights, indefinite detention, assassination, the cowardly use of drones, massive funneling of wealth to the rich, and protection of Wall Street crimes are all things that make it a moral impossibility to vote for him. Our political system has passed the point where we can still influence it from inside at any level. Therefore votes for a party that repudiates these actions is both meaningful and the start of any chance to bring our country back to anything close to a saner and less unequal, less dangerous world.

It is not enough to apologize for the uncalled-for and snarky accusation that Matt Stoller’s reasons for not wanting to vote for Obama must stem from racism – you must remove this portion of your entry entirely before anyone can truly believe you are sincere in your “apology”.

Apologize? Apologize?
THIS! IS! BALLOON-JUICE!
All we need is a bottomless pit…

Retract that bs claim of Stoller being a racist. Are you people so desperate that you smear a man with an honest argument against your candidate? Not one person has taken a word Stoller has said and refuted one point. Not one of you can take apart his argument intellectually so you smear his name like children on a school yard. One more vote for Jill Stein right here because people like you make me sick. And I am in a swing state. Shove that up you phone bank!

Thank you for trashing Matt Stoller as a racist for no reason whatsoever and in doing so trivializing REAL racism. Now, it’s just becoming noise, an epithet with dickall meaning, and actually kinda laughable.

Can’t speak for the author, but Balloon Juice’s John Cole went from an in-the-tank war hawk when Bush was invading Iraq, then “woke up” and “changed sides” by getting the tingle up his thigh and worshiping Obama’s drone campaigns, unconstitutional invasions and assassinations. The contortions make a lot of sense if you’re a bi-partisan Neocon who defends war crimes and smears opponents as “anti-semites” and “racists.” The irony is that as much as Cole denigrates Andrew Sullivan with alarming regularity, it’s mostly professional jealousy, because when it comes to ideology and devotion to Dear Leader there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them, in the same respect that there’s barely a dime’s worth of difference between Obama and Romney.

So let me see if I get this straight, you have serious reservations about the escalation of a war directed entirely at Muslim peoples. You oppose the expansion of enforcement of the War on Drugs, which disproportionately affects African-Americans over any other group. You use the excellent writings of the bloggers at the Black Agenda Report as a source in your critique. And it’s YOU who are the racist? Not the people who explicitly support these policies by voting for this president?

People like you, who continue to blame Nader for Gore’s defeat in Florida when 54% of African-American voters’ ballots were rejected, in effect completely ignoring that injustice, then turn around and accuse 3rd party voters of racism have some serious fucking balls.

@redshirt:
And after reading Glenn Greenwald’s post about the Stoller sliming, and finding that he was correct, I won’t be clicking on my Ballon Juice bookmark anymore. Dennis – you are an asshole. That is all.

The “PS” comment is unwarranted. Refuting Matt Stoller’s article point by point is one thing but attacking the person goes beyond the pale. These types of comments are what I would expect from tea party types. BTW I already voted for Obama only because of his initiative w/Obamacare but if I had read Matt Stoller’s Salon post before I did I would have searched long and hard for progressive blogs to come up with a reasoned and thoughtful repudiation or a counter argument. But I would not have found it here. Bad show guys.